Poker Face
by MissMRene
Summary: Natalia Romanova had been a child. She had loved, once, but she had grown up since then. Natasha Romanoff had a perfect poker face to prove it. Two-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

**Thank you for taking the time to read this! Please know that I have never personally read any Marvel comics, though I have done some research on certain elements in this work. I would love any feedback that you, the users of the internet, can give me!**

_{Disclaimer: Some elements of this oneshot (including but not limited to: characters, storyline, and setting) belong to Marvel and its affiliated companies. I do not own them.}_

Natalia Romanova had a perfect poker face.

She had been forced to contain her emotions ever since she had been a little girl. The leaders of the Red Room didn't tolerate outbursts, no matter how well-founded. Every time they pushed her too far; every time she had to do something morally wrong, she had to contain herself. Her ability to do so made her the best in the business. The little girls all admired her. Eventually, she was the only one left. The rest all faded away.

Natalia remembered every face, though. Each girl that had come into the Red Room and, predictably, didn't last. All of the men that had ever taken advantage of her, in every way imaginable. Her trainers, all of whom had pushed her past her limit, stuck in her mind like glue.

Which is why when Steve Rodgers asked her what she knew about the Winter Soldier, Natalia Romanova had to hide a wince.

Steve was her friend. And other than Clint Barton, she hadn't allowed anyone close to her in a very long time. Steve didn't know anything about her past though. He didn't know that she had been the youngest assassin to grace the eastern hemisphere. He was didn't know why she always wore black, even on her downtime. He didn't know the only reason she was still alive was thanks to Fury – he had chosen not to convict her of crimes that were enough to send her to the electric chair.

And Steve was _definitely _blissfully unaware that his best friend had trained her everything she knew about her job.

James Buchannan Barnes had woken from the ice not only in a different world, but as a different man. Gone was the charismatic, friendly, and kind man of the forties. All that was left was the machine. And that was the only version of "Bucky" that Natalia had ever known. He was ruthless, admittedly a killer in his own right, but somehow…she had trusted him. Eventually, they had become tentative friends. All too soon, lovers.

And then it happened. When the leaders of the Red Room figured out how to rip the Winter Soldier's mind apart, twist it, and stich it back together, he turned from her. Worse, he _left _her. Ignored her. Forgot her.

Natalia hated love after that. Hated it with a passion that would have consumed her. It didn't solely because she had a job to do. A mission to finish and orders to follow. They took the Winter Soldier away from her one day, and despite the stab she felt in her heart, Natalia Romanova had a perfect poker face.

She dug herself deeper and deeper into the hole she had created. She didn't care about the law; hardly even cared about her own life. And then there was Budapest, and everything changed again. When her mission in Budapest started, Natalia had reached an all-time low. She hated her lifestyle, hated the world, hated herself. When she learned that SHIELD agent Clint Barton was assigned to oppose her, she was almost glad. Barton was known to be a killer if need be, and while Natalia would never take her own life, she wasn't about to regret death if it was brought to her by a worthy foe.

But instead of taking her down, Barton saved her. There was nothing more to say of that, nothing more to think of; she refused to. Of course, with Steve staring her in the face, expecting her to answer him, she couldn't tell him any of her story. Steve would never understand. He was _Captain America_, all around do-gooder, more of a gentleman than anyone could hope to be. He was…something to her, and though she didn't know what yet, he was at the very least someone she trusted.

That thought occurred to her in the second that hovered in the air between them. Natalia Romanova, hater of love, was willing to partake in step one of getting close to someone – trust. It scared her more than it should have.

All she could do was show Steve her scar. The one that had been given to her by her former love – _'Trainer,' _she reminded herself furiously. It had been the nail in the coffin in her personal war against love. She had tried everything she could to get the Winter Soldier to remember her, to be a man again. But instead, he remained the machine rather than the man. He had never loved her. Never mind that he had been tortured, changed, and remade. He had _forgotten _her. Natalia Romanova had loved, once, and it had gotten her shot.

"A ghost story," she told Steve firmly, determined to believe it herself. When she lifted up her shirt to show him where the Russian bullet had torn through her abdomen, her voice was as emotionless as possible. Natalia had other scars, but that was the only one she truly cared about. It was her reminder. The thing that forced her to allow her mind to touch her memories of the old days. She didn't let them control her though. Instead, Natalia Romanova had a perfect poker face.

...

When she ran through the streets and screamed at civilians to run, Natalia struggled to swallow her panic. Not because she was afraid for the bystanders.

Natalia Romanova was afraid for herself.

She had let her heart get involved years ago, and now the action was coming back to bite her. Shots rang out around her; squealing tires and screams drowned out her pounding heart. He could have gone after Steve. He _should _have gone after Steve, because Steve didn't even know who he was. Instead, the Winter Soldier was coming for her. He was going to kill her. She knew it, but she wasn't in Budapest anymore. She wanted to live.

When he shot Natalia in the shoulder, she crept behind a car and used a trick he had taught her – distraction and getting out of the way. _'How ironic,' _she had only a moment to think. Then she slammed into him, and fought for her life. It was the physical equivalent of her war on love. She didn't love him anymore. How could she, when he was hardly the same man, and she was a completely different woman?

He fought just like he had in the old days. The Winter Soldier had stayed in shape, more practiced than he had been all those years ago. The moves felt like a dance that she hadn't done in a very long time. His fighting style had always been her favorite, just like he had always been her favorite trainer. He hadn't lost his touch, she noted. But then again, neither had Natalia.

When it was over, the three of them – Steve, Sam, and Natalia – got arrested, and it gave her time to think. Steve was heartbroken. It took everything Natalia had not to say that she knew exactly how he felt. James Buchannan Barnes (_'The Winter Soldier,' _she reminded herself harshly) had betrayed her too. He destroyed everything. And although Natalia felt a pinprick of guilt, she chose to forget that it hadn't really been his fault. The Red Room had changed him the same way it had her. Hydra had only made things worse. But it didn't really matter, because Natalia had always blamed him. It was his fault she was like this. His fault she had a very short list of people she trusted. His fault she couldn't love. His fault Natalia Romanova had a perfect poker face.

...

Steve was going to die, he was dead, she couldn't hear him in the radio, and _why hadn't she told him before? _

The massive flying ship was falling. Down, down, down. Steve had to be dead, but he couldn't be. Natalia needed him. She needed him to be alive, because otherwise her list of friends would go down to only Clint. She needed Steve to be alive, because she hadn't told him yet that she knew the Winter Soldier. She needed him to be alive, because she wanted him to know why she was _like this_. Why she had a war on love, why she wore black even if she wasn't working, why she never let her hair stay the same (_"I love you red locks, Miss Natalia," _she heard James Buchannan Barnes – _The Winter Soldier _– say.).

Natalia found Steve later, finally, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He lay on the tiny bank by the river. He looked half drowned, but she knew he would be alright. Footprints in the dirt led away from him, and after a moment she placed them in her mind. The Winter Soldier… _'He saved Steve?' _she wondered. She called an ambulance and Steve stayed unconscious. The paramedics came. They let her stay with him and ride in the ambulance, for which she was grateful. She still had things to say to him, so she had to make sure he stayed alive.

She let Sam sit by Steve's bedside in the hospital, because she didn't want to spring on him as soon as he awoke_. "Surprise! You best friend who you thought was dead but then tried to kill you and then saved you also trained me to be an assassin!" _No. It wouldn't do. She struggled with her words. At the press conferences, she kept half of her mind on the reporters, and half of it on Steve's condition. The people of the world never suspected a thing as far as she knew – Natalia Romanova still had a perfect poker face.

...

Natalia decided to find the Winter Soldier's file for Steve at the last second. She made her calls to her contacts stiffly, emotionless. When she finally had it in her possession, it took everything in her not to open it, not to see what was written about herself inside. It would be so easy to take it out. Steve would never have to know who she had been. She knew her information would be in the file even though it was supposed to be only the Winter Soldier's. After all, she had been his "little pet", and they had both been experimented on by the Red Room.

In the end, though, she didn't open it. It would be better for Steve to find out this way, Natalia reasoned. Then she wouldn't have to face him when she read the truth – she was a monster. Much of her life was all over the internet now, but so was everyone else's, and nothing of her past life was public.

When she saw Steve in the cemetery, Natalia couldn't help but smile. He was still her friend, at least for a little while longer. When she kissed him on the cheek, she knew that he thought it was a "see you later", but it was really "goodbye". She knew he would hate her soon enough, or at the very least, not trust her. She barely trusted herself, some days. "I wouldn't pull on that thread," she couldn't help but say as she walked away. It came out playful. It hid the pain in her chest.

She left him there, knowing that very soon she would have to close her heart again. She would call Clint first. He deserved to know what had happened. Then she would take a nice, long bath. SHEILD was gone, at least for a while, so she had time before her next mission. She needed time. Natalia Romanova had to hide away again; that's not who she was anymore. She had stopped being Natalia Romanova when her heart turned to stone.

Instead she was Natasha Romanoff, and she did not love. She never kept her hair the same. She did not have friends, except for a select few. She wore black, even on her downtime. She had been the youngest assassin in the eastern hemisphere. She was only alive because Fury had once given her a second chance.

Natalia Romanova had been trained by the Winter Soldier. Natalia Romanova let herself love, once, and it had backfired. Natalia Romanova had been a _child _who knew nothing about the real world.

But now she was Natasha Romanoff. And Natasha Romanoff had a perfect poker face.


	2. Chapter 2

The last thing Natasha expected was a knock on the door.

She had decided to run as far and as fast as she could to what could be considered the middle of nowhere. She had driven through the night in a car that had been reserved by SHEILD for Steve (he'd never used it, and she hoped he wouldn't notice it was gone). She pulled off the toll road in northern Ohio and found a halfway decent hotel near the exit. She checked in with the name "Natalie Rushman" – it didn't look like anyone recognized her, but better safe than sorry.

Natasha went through the motions of the bath she had promised herself, but it didn't relax her. She felt trapped in her own skin. She had to get out after a few minutes because the thought of sitting in her own dirt – literally and figuratively – began to seem disgusting.

After she dried off and got dressed, she sat on the bed, brushing her short red hair with her fingers. The repetitiveness of the action helped her focus. Her mind raced so quickly that she couldn't make sense of her thoughts, so she ignored them. Her legs were folded, giving her stability. She felt like she was going to fall over. She realized with a slight start that she hadn't eaten anything in two days. In fact, the last thing she'd had in her mouth was that piece of gum she got when Steve was asking her about –

No. No, no, no. She couldn't think of Steve, and she definitely couldn't think of the Winter Soldier. Natasha felt her face settle back into its hardened mask, and went back to brushing her hair.

Food. She needed food. A thought broke through her mental barriers: _'You don't have that much money.' _It was true. She had a few hundred dollars tucked in her pocket, but really she had only come with the casual clothes she had worn when she and Steve had been undercover at the mall –

Natasha frowned, slightly. She needed to stop. Reliving the past few days wouldn't get her anywhere. She would get something from the hotel vending machine. It wasn't the best idea, but it would do in a pinch. She needed to get her blood sugar up anyways; she had been running on adrenaline for far too long. She could've have eaten in between press conferences, but she'd felt too sick to her stomach to do so.

A frantic knock shattered the stillness.

Natasha jerked her head toward the door. She didn't dare get up. The comforter on the bed was shiny; it made crinkling sounds when she moved. If it was Hydra and she tried to get up…

"Nat!" A rough shout that she recognized instantly.

_'How?' _she wondered. In hindsight, she shouldn't have driven his car.

"Come on, open the door, Natasha!" Steve yelled through the door. She wanted to scream at him that it wasn't her name just for the sake of it, but instead stayed deathly still. He pounded on the door again; she wondered how long he could keep doing that before it simply popped off its hinges.

The hall was silent again. Natasha hoped that he had left. She didn't want to face him. Then a _thud _echoed slightly through the room. "Nat. I know you're in there," Steve said. He sounded muffled, like his face was against the door. "_Please _let me in."

After a minute of mental debate, she got up off the bed – the comforter shuffled in protest – and tiptoed to the door. As if by some miracle, he must not have heard her; he kept talking. "And I'm not just saying into the room." Natasha paused, tilted her head. "You could have told me all this stuff, Nat. You…" She started creeping to the door again. "I mean, Nat. This is…this is nothing." She wanted to laugh, as absurd as it sounded. Nothing? It was her _life _he was talking about. A life where she had been brainwashed into doing whatever the Red Room told her. A life where she had been in love with – no, no, no. She had made it to the door then, and kept listening to Steve.

"I mean, geez. I'm not going to hold this over you."

Natasha heart pounded. Her palms were sweaty, but she knew even though he couldn't see her, the only expression on her face was one of blankness. Her mind screamed and two words escaped her lips before she could rein them in.

"Why not?" she whispered.

She heard Steve give a soft sigh of relief on the other side of the door. Something solid – his head, she realized belatedly – tapped against the door as if he was resting his forehead against it. He forced a single, quiet laugh, and muttered almost to himself, "I thought maybe you were dead or something."

She chose not to tell him that the thought hadn't been far from her mind. The whole drive over she had _felt _dead, felt frozen.

Natasha sighed and wished he had just stayed away like a sane person. She leaned against the door, cheek sliding against it. The wood cooled her face as she waited for Steve to speak again. She wasn't about to.

After a minute, he answered, "Did you think I was going to?"

Natasha hesitated. The answer was obvious. _'Yes, I thought you were going to. I still think you should.' _

"You clearly did," he mumbled. She heard him shuffle around, then say "Let me in. Please." He used his no-nonsense 'Captain America' voice. Logically, she knew that if it was that important to him, he would either break down the door, or wait out there until she had to leave. The way her body felt, she knew she couldn't last much longer without food.

Natasha slowly opened the door, but didn't meet his eyes even when it had opened wide enough for him to get in.

"Nat," Steve breathed slowly. She winced and turned her face away, but didn't realize the expression had never showed on her face until he sucked in an offended huff. In the corner of her eye, she saw him relax. She didn't move out of the way – maybe he would still leave.

"Just go," Natasha croaked out.

A pause, then his calloused fingers were sliding along her chin and forcing her to look at him. Her eyes drowned in his bright blue ones as he shook his head. "No, Nat." It was all he said, but the two words had her biting her lower lip (not solely in her head, either) and blinking stinging tears from her eyes.

She pulled her chin away and shuffled back into the room and resuming her position on the bed, legs hanging off the side, head bowed. She held out one last hope that Steve would leave her alone, let her push away the memories herself. Instead she felt his weight sink onto the bed beside her. He didn't say anything; just sat there like he was waiting for something.

"You read it?" Natasha finally asked, though the answer was obvious.

Steve sighed. "Not on purpose," he answered. "If I would have known, I wouldn't have."

"Why?" It came out more broken than she thought it would – she was compromised, but she didn't want him to see that.

He forced an airy laugh. "You're my _friend_, Nat. If you wanted to keep something private, you should have said so." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He was watching her, his gaze honest. She sighed slightly. Then he said, "Though I kind of wish you would have just told me who…who Bucky – the Winter Soldier – was to you. But I understand why you didn't."

She blinked twice – understanding wasn't what she deserved after everything she had done, in the Red Room and out of it. "Are you going to look for him?"

He looked away from her, staring out the window instead. The sky was cloudy, making the room seem dark and cold. "Yeah, I'm going to try," he finally answered.

"You should ask Stark for help," she supplied. "He has resources."

She met his eyes when he looked at her again. He was frowning slightly as he responded, "You're not coming." It was a statement, though one that demanded an explanation.

Natasha thought for a few minutes before responding. "I'm going to go off grid for a while. I think…" she hesitated. "I think me sticking around might not be a good idea."

"So you're running," Steve replied. She couldn't tell by his voice if he was disappointed or simply summing it up.

She twisted her fingers together in her lap, mostly so she wouldn't have to look at him. "Yeah. It's best. For…everyone."

She felt his fingers under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. "For you," he corrected her. "Best for you." He dropped her chin, but for some reason she couldn't look away. He searched her eyes carefully; what he was looking for she didn't know. He nodded slowly. "Maybe you're right." He glanced out the window and back to her uncertainly. "Just don't do anything…you know…"

His voice trailed off and she realized that he was worried about her for the second time that evening. It made her own chest ache – she didn't deserve to be worried about. "It's just for a while," she reassured him.

"I know," he replied with one of his small smiles. "Just remember, Nat…you're not that person anymore."

She knew what he meant: She wasn't the girl from the Red Room. She wasn't weak enough to be controlled. She was _not _telling the wrong peoples' lies.

Natasha was strong. And she had the strength to push away her emotions and nod at Steve, accepting his words. After he left, she watched the sun go down through the window. As it did, she felt her own self change just like the darkening sky. She was ready.

Ready to put on her poker face and take whatever was thrown at her.


End file.
